The antiquity of the custom of giving and taking Oaths, or the debatable
questions of their observance being a religious or legal ceremony, and
whether the moral or political aspect has the greater effect upon the
minds of men, are subjects with which this paper has nothing to do.
And as the substance of Oaths for particular officers is to engage them
to a faithful discharge of their places and trusts to the best of their
ability, it has been considered, in general, unnecessary to give them,
especially as these offices carry with them the assumption that the
general Oaths required of all citizens have first been complied with. No
Oaths of office were administered or required in the New Plymouth
Colony, the power of the Church being, in effect, superior to the civil
power.
For the main purpose of this paper it will not be necessary to go
further back in history than to the reign of James the First, of
England, 1603–1625, during which time the providences of God directed
the course of the voyage of the Pilgrims away from the Colony of
Virginia to their settlement at Plymouth in New England, in December,
1620; or to carry the subject beyond the time, in the short-lived reign
of James the Second, 1685–1689, when, in December, 1686, Sir Edmund
Andros, knight, arrived in Boston with a commission to govern New
England, and the Colonial period of New England came to an end.
_In England._
When Henry the Eighth renounced the authority of the Pope, in 1534, an
Act of Parliament was obtained declaring him the only supreme head of
the Church in England on the earth; and utterly abolishing the authority
of the Roman Pontiff within the British Dominions. To give effect to
this Act there was further enacted: